be a digital entrepreneur while running a traditional book publishing company
sourcebooks is entirely bootstrapped. not knowing anything about the industry was a great benefit. moved from 1 book to 300 and from 1 employee to 75.
symptio is experimenting with selling eBooks in brick and mortar locations
"we have very bad data in this industry." transformation occurs in the margins, in increments. if you have bad data you cannot interpret transformation.
What do we mean by the transformation to eBooks. Would it be greater than 50% of sales being eBooks? Maybe not. CDs comprised 65% of all music sold in the first half of 2009 compared to paid digital downloads. It can take a long time for old formats to disappear. We will be running two companies for a long time.
showed graph of another company where B2B sales dropped over time and digital B2C grew. Total company sales remained mostly constant over time, but dipped when B2C overtook B2B, but eventually returned to normal levels. It took five years to hit the tipping point when C overtook B.
where do you start? define your verticals.
mike shatzkin: verticals/categories "the organization and delivery of stuff - including information - into…"
for categories think about how you search online. verticals should be very narrow and specific, not broad. Sourcebooks had 43 verticals when they looked at their data. They can be defined by thinking about what you're good at (expertise) and what communities you're an essential part of.
Content now puts us into a bigger frame of publishers. If you publish sports writing, you're competing with ESPN. Publishing in the largest sense.
think through the content you own and lay it out on a continuum. see strategic opportunities that might fit into it. for instance maybe a different price point product or an iphone app.
when developing an app, have fun with it and that should shine through. learn and iterate. in this approach, eBooks are only one kind of content you're delivering. help authors to monetize content in various ways. the world becomes bigger this way.
one way where old media and new media overlap is dominating categories. in any category the majority of consumers are light users. For instance although some buy every baby naming book, most only by one or two. Since these people are not experts, they will buy popular products which have a "natural monopoly" in this way. on the retail side category leaders are disproportionally supported. Implications of this:
1. competition is higher in fewer categories as time goes on (make sure you have a vertical for the product)
2. greater need for collaboration between authors and publishers. we publish authors not books
they develop all of their iphone apps in house with wire frames, then send it outside to be coded. whole new set of skills to learn.
digital experiments have a real effect on print book sales
poetryspeaks.com "the most complicated and expensive" thing we tried. it's about a community of poets. discovery = marketing site for poets. took the unique approach to secure all rights for contents before posting. made baseball cards for poets. it is an experiment, not necessarily a revenue stream, but definitely a learning experience. Metrics are what counts, don't have an ego or an opinion when learning, let the data speak. comparing 6 weeks before and after it appears the site increased book sales 55%
enhanced ebooks have the campfire effect. its immersive, visceral, immediate.
technical issues: people don't want to download another platform (format), drm
content issues: create theater of the mind, content "heat", leaving the book/integration, engagement/immersion
the ipad will create an enormous future
innovation is iteration - Micahel Cader
there is no bad time to innovate - Jeff Besos
innovate yourself out of a tight box
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